When your corporation/alliance is bad and you have only like 2 FC, then yes. No FC, no content.
It can be. If your FC bench isnāt deep, or your FC is one of those ego-cases that doesnāt hand over the reins and just orders everyone to scatterā¦ yeah.
Headshotting the FC is more about playing your opponent, not the game. If you know youāre facing a skilled FC whoās either too proud and full of themselves to let someone else get the glory, or prone to a paralyzing outburst and raging about āOh my god, those furking headshotting jackasses!!ā that keeps anyone else from being able to smoothly step in and take overā¦ pop 'em. Watch their fleet crumble into chaos. Not naming any names, but thereās a lot of pompous jerks like that out here.
Alsoā¦
The most dangerous space in EVE is high-sec: itās full of neutrals whose motivations you donāt know. (Also, lookit what happened to people in Jita this weekend. Thatās dangerous space!)
2 Likes
I have to say, back in the day when I played a lot and we actually had fleet fights my corp would have a pre contact briefing just before the shooting started which was:
āIāll FC. If I go down, Jimmy will take over, if Jimmy goes down, Bobby will take over, if Bobby goes down, Jack will take over, if Jack goes down, Dave will take over. If Dave goes down weāre probably all dead by thenā
Nobody in our fleets were considered ādedicated FCāsā and we just delegated to people without even asking them if they wanted that job. You just had to accept your responsibility. We did okay for ourselves and had a good laugh doing it. Having many capable FCās meant that our enemies never knew who was actually in command. Sometimes even we didnāt 
we just cracked on and did what the voice on comms said to do.
5 Likes
Isnāt that also how LUMPY does their fleets? I know Chessur and his small gangs were run the same way but they were all good pilots and new what to do anyways.
That works for smaller groups. When youāre coordinating the actions of 4 full fleets, not so much.
Dave sounds like eh pretty cool guy and doesnt afraid of anything.
1 Like
āIāll FC. If I go down, Jimmy will take over, if Jimmy goes down, Bobby will take over, if Bobby goes down, Jack will take over, if Jack goes down, Dave will take over. If Dave goes down weāre probably all dead by thenā
THIS ^^^^^
THIS you should pay attention to CCP, we dont NEED a dedicated FC/FC ship, we just need players to organize their fleets and fights better like back when they used to. If you donāt name off a chain of command then dont flipping complain that your FC gets sniped off the field and your fleet dies.
3 Likes
I aprove of this ship since it has a whore module at least. I do dislike head shoting in EVE since that is something that ends fights early
1 Like
It doesnāt really end the fighting. Thatās always a choice of the players. If the players donāt want to fight thatās their decision to end the fight early or continue entirely.
Dave got us into more trouble (fun fights) than I can remember. I doubt he can remember them either as he was usually too drunk to fly. Many times he would literally pass out at the keyboard in the middle of the roam. He would tell us he would wake up hours later with his face pressed against the keyboard and his ship still miraculously in one piece at a safe spot we had left him in before logging off.
I miss Dave.
1 Like
You aparently never FCed before in larger battle. You spend some time organizing the whole thing. You land on gridā¦ bam your back in HS in first minute.
You might have an alt or two but its a matter of few fleets before they get scouted to and they get blasted as well in first few minutes.
Usualy there are ppl who step up but those get targeted next.
Now your stuck with fleet without a head. That gets a retreat order or just ends being killed of.
Now put yourself in FC position. You spend all that time forming those fleets to get on one kill and get insta killed getting pulled out of the combat always among the firstā¦ Would you enjoy it? land on grid blap blap you and your alt shot down. as a primary and secondary targets. You wount want to FC just becose you wount enjoy anything out of the fight.
Now youve got lets say 100 ppl 5 of them being competent to FCā¦ if they all get primaryed before the 95 other ppl they just wount want to bother making fleets since they what? well they get shot down instantly letting someone else to do it and you eventualy reach the point where no one wants to FC
1 Like
I completely understand your argument and perspective. I even agree with you.
Personally though, I feel this problem is caused because of efficiency being the biggest key point to a battle fleet. This is why we operate in doctrines. Itās completely unrealistic in reality and is only possible and plausible in a video game.
Personally, I find large scale fleet fighting something incredibly off putting about EvE. Itās one of the games biggest selling points but the reality is that itās just not āfunā or a beautiful thing to watch. Watching 200+ ships literally playing āfollow the leaderā looks ridiculous.
Really, the VIPās of a fleet, the top brass, would be in a very large, very powerful, very expensive, virtually indestructible capital ship allowing them to remain on the battlefield and direct the actions accordingly to their flotillas and squadrons.
What we have instead is the situation where our FCās are actually acting as a massive squadron commander flying what is essentially a ābattle line shipā with the entire fleet trailing them as the squadron commander, wing commander and fleet commander.
What would be better is if the fleets actually devolved properly and in an engagement the FC would issue objectives which the Wing and Squadron commanders would then attempt to achieve.
With the current mechanics the way they are there is absolutely no incentive to break up the blobs down into smaller, manageable squads. To be honest, this is the root of the FC problem and the root of a lot of the large scale blob warfare problems.
CCP have attempted to fix this with the current sov mechanics but from what Iāve read and seen, it all looks the same.
I hate to say it but to be brutally honest, I canāt see a way of incentivizing that more dynamic type of fleet combat without dis incentivizing the efficiency of blob combat by giving diminishing returns on damage dealt to a target dependent on the number of people shooting at it.
5 Likes
There are ways to manage this. Many groups already use those ways. There are legitimate gripes about headshotting, and yet headshotting remains a legitimate tactic. Itās also one this ship doesnāt fix. You sink 2 months into just Wing Command to not be able to boost (one of the things most FC ships are capable of doing, whether T3Cs or CSs), and against everything but a 1-volley alpha strike, you only have half the effective EHP of the Command Ship this thingās supposed to match, because whichever type of Logistics you brought, half your EHP is in the other type of tank.
That tiny little sig can be used against you in that situation, too, because once the enemy fleet starts pounding on the FC ship, they just warp half a dozen ECM Burst Claws onto your logi and bam, they all have to spend forever locking you up again. Which is fine if youāre a Guardian with a sebo fitted, or a Scimitar, but that poor freakinā Basilisk pilot with his 438mm scan res is gonna be swearing, and the Oneiros pilot who knows that even after his 456mm scan res clicks in, heās still got 6s of cycle time before reps landā¦ ouch.
This isnāt the answer. Itās just the answer weāre getting.
Partialy I agreeā¦ I dont like large fleet fights becose its mostly doctrine fights. Sure we all know why. But having 3-4 ship types on field when game has over 50 diferent types is bit sadā¦
I dont know if anyone watched stream of the large battle this year but you could see the insane amount of one type of a carrier and you didnt see any other carriers at all. there might have been 1 or two 2 on 100 gallante carriers
We all know why yet I still find it sad for all those lovely ship hulls not to be usedā¦
So an immune smart bombing shipā¦ that is going to cost more than some dreadsā¦ okā¦ I can dig it.
If I am FC My objective in appearing on grid is to make sure that others do the same to their FC first. Hope my logistics keeps me in place, and if not return to the battle from a NEARBY relaunch point. But if I have no nearby relaunch point then that is a logistical error on the part of myself. To blame others for it is to deny you forgot to plan.
6 alternate commanders keeping me informed is my goal. If they keep focusing on us then I can just keep returning to the battle faster while everybody else does their thing.
Step up or step down. Whoās choice is that?
Already have in multiple other games. More than a dozen times I stepped in when I was asked to. Many times I was first to die. Puts me 10-15 minutes away from anything at the fastest speeds possible with zero ability to see what was going on. This is why FC chats exist.
Learn, grow, adapt, overcome. Or die, cry on the forums you need to be treated like a special snowflake and make a ship that is worthless because now itāll be primary target faster and easier in nul space. If 5 people being intelligent is all you can rely on then youāre not actually relying on anything.
Try to FC first then come back.
I had my chance doing it for NPSI community and I know the actual pain unlike you.
Big alliances tend to have FC in a cloaked ship as well just in case and again he doesnt get on any kills its a lot easier then your stupid re ship idea. Becose by the time you reship and get back on grid for 1 minute to get head shot again half of the fight can be already over
Pain? Then you were not prepared. You were not prepared for loss. You were not prepared for death. You were not prepared for an entire group ambushing you. You were not prepared for loss.
Come back when you can be prepared to let yourself die so that others might live. Or continue to tell your fleet theyāre not good enough to fight without you.
Crutches help you move when broken but if you choose to keep using them forever and complain you canāt walk thatās not on the people who made the crutch.
Do you really think this toy FC ship will be a solution for what you describe?
I donāt; If Iām FCing (rare these days) and I see a monitor land on grid it is going to be called primary, every time. Not simply because it is the FC but more because it is a risk averse FC.
I donāt care how much EHP they give an FC ship it is going to get called primary and shot at until it dies - Eve overall is far to risk averse, put a monitor on grid - IT IS GOING TO DIE as soon as possible.
If I have to kill ever logi on grid first to get to the monitor, I will. If I have to drop supers to kill a monitor, I will. If you want to be a risk averse FC - Prepare to die early in the fight.
NB; The type of fights the Monitor is meant to be for arenāt the 100 a side blap festās we see. They are meant for the type of fights that make Eve history - For which they are totally unsuitable. Half their EHP is always going to be in the wrong area, shield/armour, jamming out logi = dead Monitor.
If headshotting is really a problem then the logical answer is fixing clone vat bays to be useful. FC gets headshot and podded, he/she can jump straight back to an on grid super, reship and be back in the action.
This way headshotting becomes a non issue as it would achieve nothing.
2 Likes